Alyssa

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Alyssa’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1971)
currently-reading‎ (2)
read‎ (380)
did-not-finish‎ (0)
around-the-year-in-52-books‎ (208)

popsugar‎ (186)
around-the-world-in-80-days‎ (144)
part-of-series‎ (133)
pofm‎ (119)
read-harder‎ (79)

favorite-books‎ (48)
2020-diversity-reading-challege‎ (16)
need-to-reread‎ (12)
may-have-read‎ (6)
powerful-black-people‎ (5)

substance-abuse‎ (5)
women-s-history‎ (2)
cooking‎ (1)

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Alyssa is Currently Reading

Alyssa is currently reading

Run for the Hills

by Kevin Wilson (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, popsugar, around-the-year-in-52-books

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Jul 21, 2026 09:53AM

Alyssa is currently reading

In the Hand of the Goddess (Song of the Lioness, #2)

by Tamora Pierce (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 04, 2026 08:19AM

“Black women are not the inheritors of the cult of true womanhood’s picture of wifely domesticity. For them, the fight has not been to prove that they can be something other than mothers as much as it has been to have the myriad ways they mother recognized and cherished in a society whose family values rarely include them and those they love.”
― Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

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“Most children in single-parent families grow up just fine, and it is still unclear how much of the disadvantages to children are caused by poverty or family structure or whether marriage itself makes the difference or the type of people who commonly marry. Demonizing single Black motherhood does not improve the lives of children. On the contrary, the idea that 70 percent of Black boys and girls are congenitally damaged stigmatizes them.”
― Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

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“The freak-out over low Black marriage rates is connected to fears about the disappearance of Black families. And women, more so than men, are conditioned to be the keepers of family and culture. Black women viewed to be abdicating that responsibility are thought to be selling out in a way that men (who, when they date outside the race, get their own share of grief) are not. Hooking up with “the (White) man” is viewed as dancing with the Devil. And loving a non-Black man of color is reduced to perversion or fetish.”
― Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

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“Hair has been a lightning rod for enforcement of White standards of beauty. And reactions to Black women’s natural hair help illustrate the broader disdain for Black appearance. While Black hair can have a variety of textures, most tends to be curly, coily, or nappy. It grows out and up and not down. It may not shine. It may be cottony or wiry. It is likely more easily styled in an Afro puff than a smooth chignon. For centuries, Black women have been told that these qualities make their hair unsightly, unprofessional, and uniquely difficult to manage.”
― Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

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“If madness is the mark of female singleness, the delirium is spreading. The percentage of married women across all races is decreasing.6 Despite this shift, society’s views on women and marriage have hardly changed since the Irish essayist George Bernard Shaw wrote, at the start of the twentieth century: “It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as possible.”7 Singleness and its associated freedoms are viewed as a man’s game. And a woman without a wedding band, or at the very least an adoring male partner to signal her worthiness, is to be viewed as warily as a steak without a USDA stamp—something must be rotten there.”
― Tamara Winfrey Harris, The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America

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